…because open source projects are treated as second-class citizens in the Microsoft ecosystem. Many highly popular open source projects have contributed so much to the .NET community, and they’ve gotten virtually no support at all from Microsoft in return. I’d like to see that change. In fact, I’ll go even further– I think it must change if Microsoft wants to survive as a vendor of development tools.

As part of Jeff’s advertising initiative, he is donating $5000 from advertising revenue. Anad Iyer has verbally committed a matching $5000 from Microsoft, to bring the total to $10000. The winners will be determined by popular vote and Jeff is looking for nominations on his blog.

Everyone that uses open source software should do their part and give back to the community in whatever way they can and in a way that best suits their abilities. Contributing is more than just sending money to the project; it can be development work, marketing, design, evangelizing, and just about any other activity you can think of.